


Always Will Be

by writergirl8



Series: Shirbert Drabbles [4]
Category: Anne of Green Gables - L. M. Montgomery, Anne with an E (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Study, F/M, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-23
Updated: 2020-07-23
Packaged: 2021-03-04 23:33:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,541
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25454719
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/writergirl8/pseuds/writergirl8
Summary: "And what if no one makes me feel this way ever again?"Bash breathes out. It's heavy and low and Gilbert wants to catch his pain and lob it into the orchard, toss it amongst the chaos of the apples where it can't be found. Instead, he stays still and he waits."Then you've been very, very lucky. Luckier than most."
Relationships: Gilbert Blythe/Anne Shirley
Series: Shirbert Drabbles [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1752193
Comments: 39
Kudos: 177





	Always Will Be

Gilbert’s not sure how long Delly’s eyes have been opening and closing and opening again, but the more he stands in one spot, the more grateful he feels. Everything has been moving so quickly these past few days. He’s hardly had time to catch his breath, and standing here in Delly’s room, her burp cloth over his shoulder, her head in the crook of his elbow, it finally feels like time has stood still.

It would be so much easier if he could stop her from growing up, this little baby, because the moment she grows up she will realize exactly what she is missing. Or, moreso, _who_ she is missing. Gilbert wishes he could save her from that. 

Then again, maybe he should focus on what he can save himself from. 

Tomorrow, he’ll have to go to school and find out how well he did on the college entrance exams. Tomorrow, he’ll have to go to school and see _Anne_. He doesn’t know how he’s going to look at her, much less speak to her. There’s a million things he wants to tell her, to ask her, maybe even to beg her for, but ultimately he wants her small fingers to curl around his hand like they had when they danced, or the night at the bonfire when he helped her down from her perch and he had… and _she_ had… 

No. He’ll stay right here with Delly, who wants him there. Who he can protect. Bash had been at the end of his rope when Gilbert got home from Charlottetown and Hazel had been nowhere to be seen, so Gilbert had taken up baby duty. He’d spent the past hour and a half walking back and forth across the floor with her, trying to feed her, burp her, rock her, _anything_ to figure out how to get her to fall asleep. 

He has the terrible feeling she’s waiting for her mother to come home. 

He wonders if he had been waiting for his mother to come home too, when he was her age. 

“Oh Delly,” he murmurs, blinking right back at her. She smiles at the sound of his voice. “You gonna go to sleep for me? Please?” He laughs to himself. “C’mon, Delly. I need this win.” 

The baby gurgles. Gilbert sighs. 

He sits down in the rocking chair next to her crib, closes his eyes, and leans his head back, careful not to rock the chair too far. Delly stills in his arms, looking up at the ceiling and studying it with devotion. She moves her small mouth in different positions as she stares. 

Gilbert has no idea what’s so fascinating up there, so instead he thinks about what he has to do. 

He has to ask Miss Stacy if she can help him get into U of T. That’s the first step. He has to tell Bash that he’s not going to be attending the Sorbonne after all. He has to remember not to tell Anne, because he promised Winifred, and _besides_ , what difference would it make? Why live inside a false hope? It would be foolish to tell her and expect anything to change. 

Still, Gilbert can’t help it. Can’t help but imagine what would happen if he just _said_ it, if he went over to Green Gables and told her that he had chosen not to marry Winifred because he loves her more than he could love any scholarly opportunity. And maybe if she knew how much he loved her, she could love him someday? She’s so full of _ideas_ , his Anne, and maybe if she gave him a chance, he could show her that he could fulfil those. He doesn’t have much, but he could give her anything she wanted from him if she just gave him time. He could prove anything for her, if she said she wanted him to. 

But she doesn’t, so he won’t, and that’s the end of it. 

A glance down at Delly shows that her eyes have remained closed this time. Stiffening in surprise, Gilbert slowly gets out of the chair and carefully, hopefully lowers the baby into the crib. When he pulls his arms back to his side, Delly is still asleep. 

Victory. 

Making sure his shoes don’t hit too hard on the floor, Gilbert tip-toes out of Delly’s room and closes the door slowly. He breathes a sigh of relief, circling his arms a few times to stretch them out before finally heading down the stairs and into the dark bottom floor. There’s still a sense of malignance in the kitchen, lingering there from whatever the last encounter Bash and Hazel had struggled through together. He wishes he could help, but he knows he can’t. 

Gilbert’s just about to hunt down some bread and cheese when he notices Bash sitting just outside on the front porch, looking out towards Mary’s grave. For a moment, his stomach lurches with nerves, but he bites it back, substituting them for determination. He can do this. He’s just got to get it over with. 

After stepping outside and quietly shutting the door behind him, Gilbert finds his place next to Bash just the way he’s done since the moment he met him. He braces his palm on the rough wooden porch and says, very quietly, 

"So you've probably guessed that I didn't propose to Winifred."

There isn’t much surprise in Bash’s stature, but he still turns to Gilbert with raised eyebrows and says "No Sorbonne?"’

"No Sorbonne," Gilbert confirms. 

They're silent for a long while. He suspects that Bash needs time to think. Gilbert, most certainly, needs time to prepare to be chastised. 

"Thought you said you weren't moving halfway around the world on a maybe?" says Bash eventually, which makes Gilbert laugh despite the tension that he is holding tight inside of his body. He feels a keen sense of relief-- the person he respects the most in the world is making jokes, so it must be alright. 

"Technically I was telling the truth, I just didn't know which part was a lie at the time."

Relief, however, is short lived. 

“What made you change your mind at the very last minute?" 

There's a gravity in Bash’s voice that brings Gilbert right back to guilt. He feels the need to start with "I realized it was wrong,” to which Bash responds, "Yes, but how?"

Gilbert just breathes out, shifts slightly on the porch, and looks out at the sky. He decides to say it as frankly as he’s able, damn the consequences. 

"I'm.... in love with Anne."

Bash side-eyes him. "I thought we both already knew that."

"I didn't know that!" he protests, but then wavers under Bash's gaze and decides to correct himself. "I didn't know the extent of it.” 

Admittedly, he had expected a bigger reaction after all this time, after all the moments Bash had _insisted_ Anne was the one for him. But they both seem to know that now isn't the time for celebration. They already know that Anne had rejected him. Gilbert admitting that he loves her too deeply to marry Winnie isn’t a reason for joy. And, besides, he doesn't feel like laughing or being teased about his feelings for Anne. Those feelings had caused the actions which lead to the shame that comes from hurting someone who had only ever shown him kindness. He’ll have to marinate in the regret of that before he can begin to consider laughing about his notions of a romance with Anne. 

"What changed?" asks Bash, genuinely curious.

The answer to this question is so humbling that Gilbert feels the need to say it quietly, to whisper it for Bash and the fireflies only. 

"I couldn't picture a version of myself where I didn't love Anne anymore," he says, trying to ignore the stab of saying such a thing about someone who doesn't love him back. "I realized that my idea of being married to Winifred was just… getting by, secretly thinking about a person I left behind, and that's... that's not fair. That's even less fair than stringing her along to the point I did."

Bash lets out a low whistle. "You're about as far gone as I expected," he says, which makes Gilbert laugh a little despite himself. 

"I'd argue worse," he says, voice slow and careful. Now that he can talk openly about his feelings, he doesn’t want to say anything he doesn’t mean. He wants to be clear about it. "You know, I’ve been thinking about how every moment of my friendship with Anne has been difficult. Objectively, it’s been like pulling _teeth_. The first time she met me, she cracked a slate over my head. I vanished from her life and somehow ended up back in Avonlea. Each time we took a step forward, we'd take two steps backwards. But the more I’ve thought about it, the more I’ve realized that none of it was hard at all. It _should_ feel like it was hard. But instead it feels like she fits easier in my life than anyone since-- well... you. Maybe the reason I've gone about all this so terribly is because I have never had to explain myself to her, not where it counts. She understands without me having to try."

Bash doesn’t say anything at first. His eyes are fixed on Mary’s grave, watching the way the darkness is settling over it in the distance. 

"I remember when Delly was born, she was right there celebrating with us," Bash muses. "When Mary died, she came over to cook for us and read to me and give Delly as much love as she could. She's already your family, Blythe. That’s why this is so easy. And why it’s so hard."

Gilbert follows his gaze, looking over at Mary's grave too, and thinks about how easy it had been for Bash. She and Bash had worked so well together, had clicked immediately. They knew how to go back and forth, how to be passionate with each other, how to be friends, how to fight and make up. He thinks about all the times Anne has called him out for his poor behaviors, even when he didn't want to see them, and how she holds people, every person, to a higher standard because she _knows_ they can be better. He thinks about how Mary made Bash better, made him happier, made him a father.

He doesn't understand why the exasperation inside of him is mounting until the fear bursts out of him like water from a dam. "You and Mary, you just worked together," says Gilbert, frustrated. "Bash, you made sense from the minute you met each other, and the way you talked to each other seemed so unique until I realized... I think I _have_ that with someone. I think I have that person who I could talk to until the end of the world, and she doesn't love me too, and I think I'm going to spend every day missing her until I give up because I'm lonely, and I miss my dad because he could make me feel better and he could tell me what to _do_ and back then, when he was here, I felt like I had a place in the world, a purpose, and right now I can't stop wondering if my place in the world is somewhere I'll never get to be."

The harsh words die between the two of them, coming to rest on the porch, and Gilbert turns to the side just in time to see Bash wiping at the corner of his eye. He feels like an idiot for not connecting what he was saying to what Bash has spent these last months going through, but _oh god_. It's right there, the realization that Bash's love had gone somewhere that Bash cannot follow.

If his brother wanted to deck him right now, Gilbert wouldn’t blame him. Of all the narcissistic rants to go on-- 

But as per usual, Bash surprises him.

"Maybe you'll never marry her. But that doesn't mean the ways she's impacted you can't matter. From the _minute_ I heard Mary's humor for the first time, that rhythm of the way she speaks, I started paying attention to her. What she thought, what mattered to her, what her life was like. Doing that changed the way I looked at everything else. You don't have to be with Anne to carry her with you. The things she's taught you, the person she's helped you become. Those are yours to keep, Blythe. You don't have to see her every day to use them. To make a difference with them."

"And what if no one makes me feel that way ever again?" 

Bash breathes out. It's heavy and low and Gilbert wants to catch his pain and lob it into the orchard, toss it amongst the chaos of the apples where it can't be found. Instead he stays still and he waits. 

"Then you've been very, very lucky. Luckier than most."

For a moment, he lets it hit him. It crashes over him like a wave until he says "yeah" and shuts his mouth, letting the saltwater seep into him. How lucky he’s been. He’s lucky even when it hurts. 

Most people don't get an Anne Shirley-Cuthbert in their lifetime, and if they do, they aren't smart enough to get to fall in love with her.

Bash gets off the porch and shuffles towards Mary's grave. Instinctively, Gilbert knows not to follow him. Instead, Gilbert walks into the house, still stuck in his own head, and slowly tromps up the stairs. The gravity of their talk lodges itself inside his gut, so dense and weighty. He feels like he's aged a thousand years over the course of a single conversation.

He lies down on his bed, closes his eyes, and tries to picture someone lying there next to him. A friend, a family member, a lover, all packed into one woman. He tries to picture someone with blond hair like Winifred's, and when he can't, he pictures brown hair like Diana's, and when he can't he thinks about what it would be like to be resting on his back over the comforter, Anne right next to him. In his mind, she’s loudly ranting about the behavior of the characters in whatever book she's reading, probably something old and worn and dusty. He imagines himself parlaying a response, the huff of annoyance in her throat but a soft smile on her lips, and it makes something in his chest rise up like dust in sunlight, filling him up with its warmth. Then he blinks, summons the brunette again, and immediately pushes her out of his head. It feels like a betrayal.

Not of Anne. But of himself.

It settles over him with a deep sadness, a gasping loneliness that he hasn't felt since the night his father died.

He won't be getting married. He won't be sleeping next to anyone else. He won't be waking next to someone else either.

Anne's it for him. So he won't fight against the burden of his heart. He's going to be brave. Just like she is.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote 1,500 words of this in the twitter DMs of the_lazy_eye (go read her fanfics) and at that point I was like "eh, might as well continue crying in a word document." I hope you enjoy my word document and twitter DM tears alike. For the record, the DM ones are saltier. 
> 
> I'm writergirl8 on twitter if you want to come talk about Shirbert. 
> 
> And, to be clear, I cannot believe this happened. It's July of 2020 and I'm still going insane over the line "I'm not engaged, nor will I be, unless it's to you, Anne. My Anne With an E. It always has been and always will be you." I am CHANGED because of that line. Wtf. My life is a joke to whoever made that narrative choice.


End file.
